


and lights will guide you home

by mishcollin



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-26
Updated: 2013-09-26
Packaged: 2017-12-27 15:53:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/980793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mishcollin/pseuds/mishcollin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A man walks naked out of a lake with one name in his head and without a clue who he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and lights will guide you home

**Author's Note:**

> This is tagged under Emmanuel/Daphne because it explores their relationship but it's truly a Dean/Cas fic.

Daphne, he thinks, has the greenest eyes he’s ever seen.

Not that he would really know, of course. He doesn’t even know who “ _he_ " is. The furthest his memory stretches is a cold, sodden, naked stumble out of a lake, his breaths trembling and his body feeling bruised from the inside out. There’s a strange misplaced feeling in his head like something has slid out of place; only one odd and unfamiliar word remains a persistent ringing in his skull, the sole remnant of a life he might have had before.

He would have the grace to be embarrassed about being naked in front of a pretty woman alone in the woods, except that he doesn’t really think of this body as  _his,_ for whatever reason. He has no history with these delicately structured hands, with the smooth planes of his chest, the thin wiry calves. None of this feels like his own. Like he’s a star bottled up in skin. His skin  _burns_ with the cold.

"What’s your name?" the woman Daphne asks with a high, embarrassed flush to her cheeks as she extends her jacket for him to wrap around his waist.

"I don’t know," he replies, wrapping the towel securely around his hips. It doesn’t stop Daphne from staring. "I can’t…I can’t remember who I am."

"Do you have any ID?" Daphne asks with wide eyes and raised brows, and when he gestures to his naked body she blushes again. "Right."

"I only remember one name," he says, and he slumps a little, suddenly staggered by a wave of exhaustion. His lungs  _ache,_ feel like empty rubber balloons, like water had filled them up and then been pumped out.

Daphne bounds forward to support him, placing a hand on his chest to secure him from falling over. “A name?”

“ _Dean,_ " he says, and the name has a familiar weight on his tongue, like he’s spoken it a thousand times before.

"So your name is Dean," Daphne says with an encouraging smile. She really is quite pretty, with full lips and bright green eyes that draw him in. "That’s a start, right?"

"No," he says with a frown, shaking his head. "Not  _my_  name.”

"Well, if it’s the only name you can remember—"

"It’s not my name, I know that much." He coughs, tasting blood, feeling his frame rack. "I believe it’s the name of my brother."

"Well, that’s a start," Daphne says again. "Come on, we’ll get you warmed up and into some fresh clothes."

Later that evening, Daphne breaks into a fit of coughing that doesn’t relent for several minutes. When she’s finished, she admits to him with teary eyes, a red face, and a hoarse voice that she has an odd, unidentified coughing condition, and it’s plagued her for her entire life, much like asthma.

He doesn’t know why he’s compelled to do it, but he reaches out a hand and presses it to her forehead, feels a warm, tingly  _something_ arcing through his veins.

Daphne places a hand over her chest, stares at him with wide glassy eyes. Her voice is clear when she says, “The itch is gone. There’s always an itch in my chest, to cough, and…” Reverence breaks like dawn over her face. “You  _healed_ me.”

He doesn’t say also that he can see her soul, ebbing gently in spiderwebs beneath the planes of her cheekbones, behind her lips.

She calls him Emmanuel.

—-

They’re married a month later, without much pomp and circumstance. Daphne is overjoyed; Emmanuel is uneasy. Who knows if he has another wife, aside from this one? But he and Daphne had dug for weeks without trace of identification, so Daphne suggested their marriage so she could care for him more fully, more intensively, without drawing unwarranted attention.

And she loves him, she tells him. She loves his kindness, his generosity, his gentleness.

Emmanuel wants to argue that he doesn’t need to be taken care of, and that who knows what his true personality is, but ever since Daphne’s ailing mother had died, she had needed  _something_ to care for, a bird with a broken wing of sorts. She hadn’t told him that, but he can read it off of her, like he can read many things off of people that he passes in the streets.

One day, finally, after several more miracles around the town that bring people flocking to their doorstep, Emmanuel tells her about seeing souls.

Daphne is awed, reverent, joyful, much like she always is around him.

"That doesn’t surprise me, Emmanuel," Daphne says, taking his hands in her cool, gentle grasp. "That doesn’t surprise me one bit. Everyday I thank our Father that His angels sent you to me." She shakes her head and smiles in a humbled sort of way. "I sometimes wonder how I ever deserved such a gift."

Emmanuel nods and smiles and tells himself that he feels the same. Tells her so. Watches her face light up, her soul ebbing in bright pulses of happiness.

"What does my soul look like?" Daphne asks, and closes her eyes as if awaiting evaluation.

Emmanuel looks; he sees her soul always, so it’s somewhat of an effort to focus more intently on it. Daphne has a lovely soul, a small white-gold center of peace, faith, good intentions, and compassion. It’s much like many of the other souls Emmanuel sees walking down the streets.

"It’s beautiful," he tells her, and she kisses him.

—-

One day Daphne comes into the house visibly flustered and sets down her groceries on the counter. Emmanuel has been out for the day on various “missions,” as Daphne calls them, healing people within the neighboring towns and cities, while Daphne maintains a full-time job as a secretary.

"Something wrong?" Emmanuel asks, concerned. "Something at work?"

"It’s just…" Daphne cups a trembling hand over her mouth. "Have you been watching the news?"

Emmanuel shakes his head.

"There are these two… _serial killers_ on the loose, by God, it’s terrible.” Slivers of tears sit on her lower lids. “Just, all those people, children,  _slaughtered…_ and it’s like they find  _joy_ in it….”

"That’s terrible," Emmanuel says and thinks yes, it’s truly awful.

"They’re called the Winchesters. You haven’t heard anything about them?"

Emmanuel shakes his head again.

"Just…stay in the house, alright? Until this blows over." Daphne presses a kiss to his temple and heads into the living room with her arms clasped tightly across her chest.

—-

Weeks blend into months and Emmanuel settles into a rhythm of normalcy with Daphne. It seems strange to think there were ever a time in his life  _before_ Daphne, which he supposes, he wouldn’t remember if there were.

Emmanuel doesn’t eat, doesn’t sleep, but he spends many nights sitting straight up in bed and  _straining_ to pull some tendril of memory from the darkness that lies dormant in his head, of the day before he walked out of the river. All he can remember is the one word. He sometimes wonders if he truly did drop out of the sky, as Daphne sometimes tells it.

Emmanuel performs many miracles, healing mostly, and this gives him purpose, makes him feel like he’s here for  _something._ But it also fills him with terrible loneliness and confusion. He hasn’t shaken the feeling that he’s shackled to this skeleton, bound by these veins, like they aren’t his own. No one else sees souls, no one else performs miracles, no one else that he’s even  _heard_ of. The only person Emmanuel relates to in this regard is Jesus Christ, and that’s enough to give him a headache most weekdays.

And as time passes, Daphne grows…frustrated with him, for reasons that make a strange, flustered heat rise to his cheeks.

It first comes to attention one night that they’re laying in bed, Emmanuel’s gaze following the tiny continents formed by the ceiling paster, lost in reverie, and Daphne shifting restlessly next to him.

Daphne finally sits up, sending a shower of dark curls around her face. “Emmanuel, I….I’m thinking there’s something I’d like to try.”

Emmanuel frowns. At one in the morning?

He’s not sure whether he’s more surprised or bewildered to find Daphne suddenly straddling his lap in an awkward but earnest sort of way, and she runs her hands over his chest and stares at him anxiously, biting her lip as if in invitation.

"What are you doing?" Emmanuel asks, his throat suddenly dry as sand.

Daphne, after a moment’s struggle, peels off her shirt and braces her hands against Emmanuel’s abdomen. She has swelling, soft breasts, concealed mostly by a plain black bra, and soft expanses of pale skin and curves, but instead of feeling arousal like Emmanuel suspects he’s supposed to, he feels only intense discomfort and panic.

"Erm, Daphne," Emmanuel murmurs, clearing his throat as Daphne begins to pepper kisses down his neck. "I’m not sure if we should do this."

Daphne pulls back and lowers her eyes, a dark flush rising in her cheeks. “Marital sex isn’t a sin, Emmanuel. We’re wed in the eyes of God.”

"Yes, I know, but…"

Daphne waits, seeming suddenly terribly uncomfortable, to which Emmanuel feels horrible about, but he plunders on, “We don’t even know if I’m married to someone else. I mean…I could be…”

Daphne stiffens as if he’s slapped her, and instantly dismounts him, yanking her shirt back on and standing up from the bed.

There’s true steel in her voice when she finally replies, “Maybe you should’ve thought of that when you married me.”

"Daphne," Emmanuel tries again, but the words block in his throat. He doesn’t know how to say that he hadn’t been eager for marriage, not when such a huge part of his life was still missing from memory, but he knows how Daphne would respond to that.

Daphne says, with tears in her eyes, “I’ll sleep on the couch,” and all but flees the room.

Emmanuel spends several restless hours replaying those awful few moments, feeling terrible _,_ and then he sleeps, for the first time in weeks.

He dreams of a man without a face. Their legs are tangled underneath sheets and they lay facing each other, hands clasped tightly under the blankets. Something about the man feels achingly familiar, warm and brutally _real,_ and the faceless, nameless man calls him by a soft one-syllable name in a gruff, intimate voice. Emmanuel wakes up flushed with shame and achingly hard, sweat pooled into the ridges of his back, and he takes a cold shower before Daphne can check on him. He can’t shake the nameless man from his thoughts, the utter tangibility of him, and dreams of him for weeks to come.

—-

Things change between Daphne and Emmanuel after that night. Daphne is fiercely in love with him still; Emmanuel tells himself he feels the same. Sometimes, he believes it when he looks into her eyes, green and captivatingly bright, but when they break eye contact Emmanuel can’t remember why he felt that way.

One morning, while they’re silently eating breakfast, Daphne asks, as a seeming non sequitur, “Emmanuel, can I ask you something?”

"Of course. Anything, Daphne."

"Are you…" Daphne stirs her oatmeal in an agitated way, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear, before she seems to strengthen her resolve. "Are you gay?"

Emmanuel blinks. He’s not offended by this question, merely surprised. And confused.

"Gay?" he echoes, to buy time.

"You know." Daphne lowers her eyes. "Homosexual.  _Queer._ ”

"No, I don’t believe so." Emmanuel doesn't feel a certain way about the complexities of sexuality, one way or the other. He's not even quite sure he has one. "Why would you ask a question like that?"

"Other than the fact that you don’t respond to my…advances," Daphne says, and there’s definite bitterness there, to Emmanuel’s chagrin. "You call his name in your sleep sometimes."

"His name?" Emmanuel asks, perplexed but somehow already knowing the answer.

Daphne meets his eyes with a strange, bemused gravity. “Dean.”

And Emmanuel isn’t sure how to respond.

—-

A few days later, Daphne stays home for the day but sends Emmanuel out on one of his missions with a peck on the cheek and her eyes downcast.

 _I wish there was some way I could make everything up to you,_ Emmanuel wants to say, but he doesn’t, because how do you explain a situation like this to someone? Emmanuel loves Daphne, truly; she’s kind and good and her soul is untainted, flowering with good intentions. But he isn’t  _in love_ with Daphne. Then again, Emmanuel has never been in love, so how would he know the difference?

Daphne deserves more than him.

Emmanuel doesn’t mind walking back from the town grocer’s house after the healing; it’s only two miles as it is, and Daphne’s car is in the shop for a week due to a faulty transmission.

The grocer was a kind man, faithful to a fault, but his heart was in the right place. His wife had recently been diagnosed with the beginning signs of Alzheimer’s, and had begged Emmanuel’s help. After the healing he had fallen at Emmanuel’s feet and thanked God, which had made Emmanuel slightly uncomfortable because he was not Jesus Christ nor did he aspire to be.

When he rounds the block and his house comes into view, he spots two tall men fighting viciously on his front porch; his heart leaps into his throat and he takes off running, his only thought,  _Daphne._

He comes reeling to a halt when the taller man on his porch jams a knife into the chest of the other man and Emmanuel catches briefly for a moment the most gruesome sight he’s ever encountered; the latter man’s face twisted, eyes black, the contours of his face distorted and unmistakably  _evil._ His eyes—and patches of his chest—light up like fireworks when the man stabs him, and his empty body crashes down the stairs.

Emmanuel stares at the dead creature for a moment in shock before slowly looking up to the other man—and is  _blinded._

Emmanuel notes three things in quick succession; the first being that this man’s soul is so radiantthat thin pulses of color illuminate the entire porch; they light a fire in the man’s ribcage, send sparks out from behind his eyes, beat in tranquil waves in time with his pulse. It’s like nothing Emmanuel has ever seen, or even imagined he  _would_  see.

The second is that this man’s soul  _pulls_ at him, and likewise; the soft lightwaves from the man’s central being reach for him with a desperation that knocks him breathless, as if it’s yearning for him, tugging him in, and Emmanuel’s entire being is alight with it, like he’s found something he didn’t realize he was searching for.

The third is that the man is staring at him with a vicious tangle of emotions that Emmanuel doesn’t understand—shock, hurt, joy, fury, relief, all knocking restlessly against each other.

After a few seconds of dead radio-silence, Emmanuel forces himself to ask, “What was that?”

Without waiting for an answer, unsettled by this man’s effect on him, Emmanuel bounds up the stairs and pushes past him; the man is still staring at him, ghastly pale and his wide eyes glazed, and when Emmanuel’s skin brushes his electricity jumps between them and the man recoils. Emmanuel pretends that he hadn’t felt it, ignoring the way his skin starts to prickle like static.

"Daphne!" Emmanuel shouts as soon as he enters the house, and he hears a muffled cry from the living room.

He nearly stumbles in his haste to get to her, hears the man following closely behind him, and something in Emmanuel’s chest pangs to see Daphne tied down, gagged, her eyes huge and bright with tears.

"That creature hurt you," he says as he begins to untie her, and Daphne wriggles under the ropes and hoists them above her head.

"I’m okay." She grips onto his arm and stands, leaning into him, her fear and worry a tangible taste in his mouth. "But, Emmanuel…they were looking for you."

"It’s okay." Emmanuel looks to the man, who’s staring at them with that same strange, wounded expression, like he’s been hit across the face. Feeling uneasy, Emmanuel takes Daphne’s hand and crosses to meet him. His soul flows out gently and fills up the entire room. There are patches, bruises, scars on it too, and Emmanuel can sense this man’s weight in the lines of his face and by the heaviness in his heart, cold and deadening, can see the sutures on his soul where it’s been flayed apart and pieced back together.

Emmanuel blinks and focuses on the man’s face for the first time, squinting to see through the distracting brilliance of light that seems to pump out of him. He’s ruggedly handsome, almost beautiful, with wide green eyes that remind him of Daphne’s and an expression that’s an odd mix of heartbroken and distressed.

Emmanuel doesn’t understand.

"I’m Emmanuel," he says, and offers a hand.

The man looks taken aback, hesitating a moment before he takes the hand and shakes. Emmanuel can feel the calluses coarse on his fingers. “Dean. I’m…Dean.”

He senses Daphne cast a look at him, but doesn’t turn to gauge it.

Surely just a coincidence. Emmanuel ignores the way his heart picks up.

"Thank you for protecting my wife," he says, drawing Daphne closer.

The man looks stricken; there’s a sharp flare from him, of an emotion that Emmanuel can’t place. Perhaps it’s surprise. “Your wife,” he says, blinking. “Right.”

"I saw his face," Emmanuel murmurs, remembering the way the creature’s features had convulsed into dark and grotesque shapes. "His  _real_ face.”

Dean frowns. “He was a demon,” he replies, as if it should be obvious.

"A demon walked the Earth," Emmanuel breathes. What could this mean? That there would be more to come? There’s something about that thought that’s chilling, and he feels Daphne crowd closer to him. Her eyes are fastened on Dean, impassive.

"De _mons,_ " Dean says, looking more bewildered. "Whackloads of them. You don’t know about…?"

They meet eyes again and Dean trails off at Emmanuel’s confusion. Emmanuel can’t shake the nagging feeling that they’ve met somewhere before, but there are plenty of Dean’s and surely this man would’ve said something if they were brothers or otherwise.

Daphne looks up at Emmanuel with a soft, astonished look. “You saw the demon’s true face.” She elaborates to Dean, “Emmanuel has very special gifts.”

Emmanuel’s eyes haven’t left Dean, watching the way emotions buoy him, back and forth, the way the light from him fluctuates and contracts, mesmerized.

"Yeah," Dean says, and his eyes haven’t left Emmanuel’s either. "I—I’ve heard about…Emmanuel. That you can heal people up." There’s a soft, bitter quirk to his lips now, one that leaves Emmanuel as flummoxed as his other mannerisms. He doesn’t understand this strange man at all.

"I seem to be able to help to a certain degree," Emmanuel concedes, hesitantly. He looks to Dean and decides that he very much wants to help him; Dean is a good man, he can see that from miles away, and so battered that he finds himself almost unconsciously wanting to ease the load, despite the maelstrom of unwarranted emotions that he can barely even begin to pick through. "What’s your issue?"

"My brother," Dean says, and his voice cracks.

Emmanuel makes an agreement to go with Dean that night, and Daphne kisses him goodbye after he’s packed up his things. He can feel Dean’s eyes boring into his skull, drilling tiny holes, as Daphne whispers, “Please come back.”

"Of course I will, Daphne."

"I’ll pray every night for your safe return," she says, and presses a tender kiss to his knuckles. He hears a bang and when he looks up, he finds that Dean’s already left the house.

"Is that him?" Daphne whispers, so quietly that Emmanuel almost misses it. "Your brother? Or…" She looks at the ground with an unreadable expression. "Whatever he is."

"I don’t think so," Emmanuel says with a frown. "He would tell me if he knew me, surely."

Daphne nods. “Travel safely, Emmanuel.”

Emmanuel finds it appropriate to press a kiss to her cheek, and when he pulls away, her eyes are closed.

The moment he gets to the car, Dean has him shoved against the car door, his hands bunched so tightly in his sweater that he pinches the skin beneath. Emmanuel drops his things and gasps, prepared to fight, but Dean only glares at him, chest heaving, and when Emmanuel looks closer, he realizes with some astonishment that Dean is  _shaking._

"Alright, what game are you playing?" Dean asks, his voice pitched into a growl as he jolts Emmanuel against the car again. "Answer me, dammit! Is this some kind of sick joke?"

"Joke?" Emmanuel splutters. "I’ve done nothing! Get off me!"

Dean’s eyes search his with almost bizarre desperation, and his soul flickers wildly, like the reflective lights off boats onto the water. “I can’t even—you’re not even—”

"Do I know you from somewhere?" Emmanuel asks, suddenly starved to know who this man is, riddle out all the strange scars on him, unravel the threads that make him up.

Dean stares at him for another moment before he releases him with a soft, angry huff. “I’ve never seen you in my life. Just get in the car.”

Still buzzing with adrenaline, Emmanuel pitches his items into the back and clambers into the shotgun seat. For some reason, the smell of the old leather seats, the sun-baked musty scent of a car dented with age, gives him a strange wave of deja vu.

Emmanuel is shocked to see Dean has tears in his eyes when he climbs into the driver’s seat.

"Dean?" he asks quietly, in concern. "Are you all right?"

"I’m fine," Dean says, blinking, and after a few moments, his eyes are dry. Emotionless. "I’m fine."

Suddenly Emmanuel gets the gripping, unshaking feeling that he won’t be coming back, not to this town, not to Daphne. It’s a horrible and absurd thought, but he can’t rid himself of it. The conviction that he would run away with this strange man—that he wouldn’t say no if he were asked, despite his love and care for his wife—shakes him to his core.

There’s just…something about him. Some odd unspoken quality that Emmanuel finds himself drawn into, sucking him under, like the ground is giving out from under him.

Like he would give up…. _everything._ For him.

The silence between them, old and knit with unspoken things, stretches on.


End file.
